Spark
by Sarun
Summary: Set five years after current events in the manga. Konohamaru watches over his young cousin for an afternoon.


Spark

By Sarun

**AN:** The idea for this story randomly came to me in my fiction writing class a few weeks ago and it stuck. It's an overview of possible line of events in Naruto and the future outcomes. May be close, may be way off, but I liked writing it all the same.

* * *

_Twak!_

_Twak!_

He found the sound of the shuriken hitting the wooden posts oddly comforting. Just familiar, probably – a reminder of more innocent days, back before the real missions, when his shuriken were aimed at wooden targets rather than flesh and blood.

Konohamaru glanced up, his hand shielding his eyes from the light. Hues of yellow and orange had begun to tint the setting sky.

The schoolyard was nearly deserted, save for a couple of kids play-fighting on the other side of the yard and another few playing ball. She was the only one still practicing; it was only at her insistence that he waited this long.

Not that he really minded. He had been the same way when he started learning – staying out late to work on his skills, filled with a childish enthusiasm. It would ease after some time – it was only her first week at the academy, after all.

His eyes moved back to the young girl in front of him. She was putting a great deal of effort forward, he could see. The wooden targets had several shuriken embedded in them – not precisely at the intended mark but a definite improvement from days before when the shuriken had been hitting the dirt.

"Keep your feet steady, Bara. You're shifting your weight to your toes when you throw; keep them planted on the ground, okay?"

Bara looked over at him with a slightly puzzled look on her face.

"Here, watch where I keep my feet." Picking up one of the extra shuriken, Konohamaru aimed and hit the target right in the center with relative ease.

"Now you try." He knelt down beside her, placing his fingers around her hand clutching the shuriken and guided the throw.

"See? All the throwing energy you need is in your arm, there's no need to move all your body for it." Bara grinned at him determinedly and returned to throwing her shuriken.

He sat back down and watched. She clearly had her father's hair, soft black ashen in color. When she was a baby, it had stood up in the back, much like his own and his uncle's had. You couldn't see it now, though, since her hair had grown past her shoulders. She also had her father's brown eyes. Her skin was lighter, however, much like her mother's had been.

"Konohamaru, I did it! I did it!" she pointed to the post.

The last shuriken she had hit the target, not dead center but in the loop closest to it.

"Great job!" He ruffled her hair affectionately. "Do you want to go home now? We'll get something to eat on the way."

"Not yet!" She stopped to catch her breath. "I have to get good at these!"

"Oh? Why the rush?"

"Shikamaru said he would teach me to use daddy's knives when I was good enough!" With that, she turned and ran to pick up the shuriken on the ground and on the post to start again.

The smile slowly evaporated from Konohamaru's face. A sudden, clenching pain had sprung up somewhere in his insides, the same place he could never exactly pinpoint but always hurt whenever the subject was broached.

He made sure to look down at the ground in case Bara turned around suddenly. Time had dulled the pain. But never healed it.

Uncle Asuma. They hadn't been the closest relatives – but they were still family. His death had been a painful blow.

Shortly before he passed away, they had spent some rare time together in a training session. His uncle had decided to begin teaching him to summon Enma, the traditional summon for the Sarutobi clan. While he didn't make it that far the first session, he did well enough; Asuma had been surprised when Konohamaru managed to summon two different monkey forms. Asuma had promised they would train again the next week, to practice until then.

Only the next week never came.

He would often get jealous when Asuma and Kurenai's students, especially Shikamaru, spent large parts of the day with Bara. She was _his_ cousin, after all. But he was careful to hide it. Being jealous was plain immature (though he was still secretly pleased when Shikamaru was promoted to Jonin and spent more time outside the village). It was good for her to have that kind of attention, being an orphan. And it wasn't like he could be around all the time, even though he had sworn to try and be everything to her that his grandfather had been to him.

"Your mother and father died defending the village. They were heroes."

So many children were told that growing up, including himself. And it was what Bara was told well. It was a simple and satisfying answer for now, something the younger kids could get the idea of and be proud, but it would not be so forever. Already Konohamaru dreaded the day she would start asking the real questions. How and why. Details.

For now the pictures and the stories would do to appease her curiosity. Ever since she was an infant, each day whoever was around had made a point to show pictures of her parents or tell her a story. Her mommy and daddy, they told her, the same with the Hokage memorial for her grandfather.

Bara had come to understand they were people over time.

_People she would never meet…_

And one day she would have to know why. Because of the Akatsuki. The Rain Country. The freak attack on Konoha.

Konohamaru involuntarily moved his hand over the three scars etched in his left cheek - only one of the many permanent reminders he had of that night.

Five years earlier, enemy ninja allied with the Akatsuki had launched a freak attack on the village that took everyone off guard. Defense was thin, as several of their strongest shinobi had been sent out earlier on separate missions involving remaining Akatsuki members - only too late did they realize it was a well-planned trap distraction.

What had been so deadly about the attack were not the enemies outside the walls but the ones that had infiltrated and thwarted defense efforts from within. There had been no time to evacuate as they had done during the Sound and Sand invasion. Combined with the many absent high-skill ninja, the results had been near-disastrous.

He remembered far too well. Awoken in the dead of night - his first panicked reaction had been to find his aunt - running through the confusion and fighting - trying desperately to find her.

Aunt Kurenai might have gotten to safety, but it was never like her to stand idly by in times of danger. It just wasn't. She had stayed back to ensure a group of trapped civilians managed to get away. Thanks to her they did, but before she could follow them, enemies caught up. Even in her condition, merely weeks from her due date, she had held her ground well.

Konohamaru just managed to catch sight of her amongst the confusion and panicked fighting. He could have made it to her. He would have. If only he had he seen the attacker come at him from the side –

"Ow!"

Startled out of his thoughts, he jumped to his feet at the sound of the scream. Bara was gripping her hand, a small trail of blood trickling down her arm. One shuriken deeply embedded in the post had blood on it.

Agitated with the stress of the memory, his voice was harsh when he said: "What happened? Let me see." He wrenched her hand away from the injury, dabbing away at the blood with a cloth handkerchief to find the wound.

"Don't grip shuriken like that! You could get hurt! See what happened?"

Her lower lip trembled slightly as he examined the injury. Konohamaru began wrapping the handkerchief firmly it around her hand. "Let's go home."

"But-"

"No." He snapped "We're leaving. Now!" Bara stopped talking. As he wrapped her hand in silence, his thoughts involuntarily drifted back to where they had broken off.

- he had caught sight of Kurenai a short distance away and hurried towards her. Distracted, the enemy ninja had caught him unaware from the left, scraping at his face with the clawed glove on his hand, knocking him to the ground and pinning him in a flash of pain and blood.

The enemy ninja would have finished him off right there, but somehow Konohamaru had managed to shove a kunai into the man's gut and twisted with all his might - his first kill. But too late.

He shoved the body off of him, managed to get to his feet and run. When he finally got to her, she was sitting leaning slightly against a wall, her eyes closed, three or four enemies dead on the ground around her.

"Aunt Kurenai!" She opened her eyes at the sound of his voice.

"Konohamaru…" her voice was faint and it had scared the hell out of him.

"We have to go!" He put her arm over his shoulders, trying to help her to feet.

"No – get -get it out…" she murmured feebly

A small metal poison needle in her back, just next to her spine. The tiny thing that would kill her.

He and another ninja passing by had managed to get her away to one of the relatively safe tunnels where wounded were being treated. She had gone into labor there, giving birth in her last hours.

Konohamaru refused to let the medics treat the injuries to his face, running outside to stand guard with some other ninja. Only when he heard the sharp, sudden sounds of a baby crying had he ventured back inside. And there she was, his cousin, a wrapped bundle in Kurenai's arms.

Kurenai had been so happy to see her husband's eyes again.

There had been no way to get to where the antidotes, or most medicines for that matter, were stored. If anything had been remotely lucky that night, it was that the poison at least had not harmed the baby.

Bara. Rose. Named for the flowers Asuma had given to her so often, while they had dated and even after their marriage.

"Aunt Kurenai, please hold on – you're the only family I have left."

"No, Konohamaru. You have Bara. And you are the only family _she_ has left."

The rest of the night had been a blur. At some point he had fallen asleep – likely passed out from exhaustion. By the time he awoke it was early dawn and the left side of his face was bandaged.

Kurenai was not in the room. Nearby, a medical ninja was holding the baby, still wrapped in her white blanket. He knew why without asking, he had felt burning tears in his eyes even before the understanding fully registered. The medical ninja, upon seeing him awake, walked over. He gently held out Bara, fast asleep, out to him.

"Do you want to hold her?"

He did. All he could remember from the rest of that night, or most of the following day for that matter, was his sitting with the baby asleep in his arms.

He felt a sudden tug on his Chuunin vest. Snapping out of his thoughts once again, he realized Bara was looking at him with a scared look on her face.

"I'm sorry, Konohamaru."

It took him a few moments to realize he had scared her. "It – it's okay. It's nothing, I panicked, that's all. I'm sorry. I just don't want you to stress your hand. It won't heal well if you do." After a short pause, he added with a smile: "It's happened to me too, you know."

"Really?"

"More times than I can count" he answered, taking her uninjured hand in his and standing up.

"Wait, Konohamaru –" Bara looked up at him with a small smile, tugging on his vest again. He kneeled down.

"What is it?"

"Piggyback!" She grabbed him around the neck with both arms gently; he rolled his eyes in mock irritation.

"Alright, fine…"

They made their way through the street, Bara clinging to his back and talking animatedly about her plans the next day.

"Kiba-kun said he'll take me to play with the new puppies tomorrow"

"That sounds like fun. Do you want to get one of those sweets?"

"Choji-kun got me some earlier."

"Oh, okay. Did you see Ino today too?"

"I'm not talking to Ino!"

"Still mad about the hair ribbons?"

"I hate those girly ribbons!"

"Yeah, I know."

After a few moments' silence, Konohamaru decided to tell her something.

"Do you know how your parents picked your name?"

"No…"

As he began the story, he felt a sudden tug against his head, Bara had quickly pulled off his headband, giggling.

"Guess who I am!"

Looking over his shoulder at her, he just had to smile - it was a pretty good impression. Bara had pulled the collar of her shirt up enough to cover her mouth and nose, and was holding his headband over her left eye.

"Okay, what are you up to?"

"Trying to cheer you up" Bara said as she pulled her shirt collar back down and handed back his headband.

"Why? Did I look sad?"

"You were talking about my mommy and daddy."

Konohamaru was surprised. "Why would you think that makes me sad?"

She hesitated a few moments. "They make you sad. You always look sad before you talk about them."

Konohamaru's mouth fell slightly open as he stopped in his tracks. He never thought she'd notice…After several silent moments, he knelt back down to the ground, turned to face her, putting his hands firmly on her shoulders.

His voice gentle, trying to say it the best he could. "I'm sorry, Bara, that's not true. I don't get sad because of _them_, I feel sad because I miss them. Do you understand?"

She looked down at her feet then, lightly kicking at the dirt. "Yes. I-I think I miss them too."

Konohamaru gently pulled her into a one-armed hug, which she returned with a slight sob. After several long moments, she pulled away, quickly rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand, then reached out and took his hand in hers.

"Let's go, Konohamaru."

As they began the walk back once again, Konohamaru let out a small sigh. There would be many things he'd have to tell her as she grew older, once the time came for her to know them. Not only about her mother and father, but the battles the village faced, the ensuing war, the heroes and eventual new Hokage that saved the village. One day - but not yet.

They were nearly back home when he felt her slightly squeeze his fingers.

"Can we play on the swings? Please? Just for a minute." Bara eagerly pointed to the empty set over in the nearby playground.

He looked down at her hopeful smile and grinned.

"Sure thing. As long as you want."


End file.
